Madison Elick serves up a ‘chicken wing dog bowl’ from Maddy’s Doghouse during Swoyersville’s Wing Fling event on Saturday.
Hannah Simerson | Times Leader
Crowds flocked to Swoyersville’s Roosevelt Softball Field on Saturday to taste-test the area’s finest chicken wing offerings during the town’s first Wing Fling event.
Hannah Simerson | Times Leader
Eric Keiper, left, Dave Hampton, Peter Cwalina, Brianna Keeler, and Swoyersville Mayor Christopher Concert voted for the best wings in six different categories during Saturday’s Wing Fling event in Swoyersville.
Hannah Simerson | Times Leader
SWOYERSVILLE — Wing lovers flocked to Swoyersville’s Roosevelt Softball Field on Saturday to taste-test the area’s finest chicken wing offerings during the borough’s first Wing Fling event.
Dozens of food vendors lined the field boasting their finest wings, pizzas, stromboli, desserts, and more — all competing to be named the winner of one of six wing-tasting categories: best dry rub, best bites, best traditional mild, best traditional hot, best overall sauce, best non-chicken wing item, and people’s choice.
A panel of five judges judged the wing-tasting competition, with only the people’s choice category judged by the public.
“This valley is flooded with great places to eat chicken wings,” said Jeffrey Lewis, who runs the NEPA Chicken Wing Bulletin Facebook Page and helped organize Saturday’s event.
“All the way from your mainstream places to your corner dive bars that you would never go into, but when you go into them, they have the best wings ever — the best food ever, period,” he added.
Lewis brought the idea to host a chicken wing festival to the Swoyersville Parks and Recreation Board in an effort to both bring the community together to celebrate local cuisine, but also to give back to Swoyersville parks.
“We want to make sure the parks are good for the town,” Lewis said, adding that all proceeds raised from vendor applications and event t-shirt sales will go directly towards improving the town’s parks.
And, after nine months of organizing, Lewis said the event was better than he could have hoped.
“It’s lived up to my expectations and more. I barely slept last night with anxiety just hoping everything went smooth, and it’s turned out better than I could have expected,” he said.
By 1 p.m., just two hours into the event, over 600 people had walked through the field grounds — an impressive feat considering this year marked the inauguration for the event.
“We were kind of skeptical,” said Brianna Keeler of Swoyersville, who sat as one of five judges for the wing-tasting competition.
“There are so many events in the summer, so you really never know what the turnout is going to be,” she said.
To Keeler, the large turnout is enough to place Swoyersville on the map — the food map, that is.
“I think much like the other towns have the kielbasa and the pierogis, Swoyersville is now going to be known for the wings,” she said.
Attendees milled amongst the food vendor trucks, most with large lines of eager customers waiting to taste-test something new.
Such is the case for Danielle Dane of Wilkes-Barre, who waited in a vendor line while taste-testing a smoked bacon-wrapped kielbasa.
The wings brought her out, she said, and she was glad she did.
“We were excited not knowing what to expect from the first year of it, but we’re definitely glad that we came,” Dane said.
On the vendor side of things, Artisan’s Fire owner Barton Weidlich couldn’t help but be glad he took a chance on the event.
“I came out to today’s event because I thought it was going to be unique,” he said, while a line of hungry customers looked on to watch him man a wood-fired oven full of pizzas.
“It’s the first time out of the gate, and look at this — look at the crowd,” he added.
His mobile wood-fired specialties truck even offered a new addition to the menu just for the event: chicken and waffle wood-fired pizza.
As the event continued on and more folks began to file in, not a soul was left hungry at the Roosevelt Softball Field.
